


No Place to Die

by Gruffen, valinorbound



Series: The Sun Will Shine On Us Again [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: (we've been writing this for a year rip), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Found Family, Gen, No Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), a very very self-indulgent au which will get happier we promise, in which everyone eats pizza and cries, in which everyone got out of Midland Circle together and very much alive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-02-08 11:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18622720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruffen/pseuds/Gruffen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/valinorbound/pseuds/valinorbound
Summary: Claire couldn’t help but realise the inevitable - no one else was coming.They would have to save themselves.ORIt's after the end, and New York needs defending.





	1. half burned in flames

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Dust and Blood - if you haven't read that, all you need to know is that this is after the Snap - Matt, Danny, Luke, and Karen were dusted. Claire is now phoning the other Defenders to try and figure out who survived.
> 
> Chapter title from Beautiful Crime by Tamer

**CLAIRE**

 

This time, Foggy picked up.

They both spoke at the same time, folding panicked words over each other, talking at the pace of their beating hearts - the tears could be heard in every word they said. It was a nervous whirlwind of _What just happened?_ and _Please, please help_ , but with each sentence, reality seemed to sink in further.

 

Claire couldn’t breathe.

 

“Claire - what’s going on? Are you okay? Please, oh God...” Foggy’s voice shook on the other end of the phone that she held as if it was an anchor to the world, stopping her from falling into ash right there.

 

She took a trembling breath. “Yeah, I’m- I’m still here…”

 

“Matt’s gone, Claire, he just- I don’t know what it was, he’s- how do I get him back?” There was a strange determination to Foggy’s voice that broke at the last moment, as Claire heard his muffled terror in the “ _Jesus, Christ- shit-”._

 

She’s a nurse. Dealing with this, with the panic and uncertainty, was what she had her degree for. “Hey, listen to me. Don’t panic, this is just- like twenty-twelve, remember? It’ll be ok - someone will figure it out.” Even as the words came out of her mouth she could feel the lies embedded in them, the truth that was clawing its way upwards. She pushed that truth back down. “I’ll meet you… somewhere. Alright? We’ll stick together.”

 

She could almost see Foggy shaking his head. “I don’t want to leave him.”

 

_What, you think he’ll just regrow from dust? Like some kind of magic, all this will be undone?_

 

“Alright, I get it,” Claire said. “I’ll come over as soon as I can, we can find the others, make sure they’re okay.

 

“The others? You mean, Matt’s- super squad?” He asked. “Do you really think they’ll be able to do anything about it?”

 

“We can hope,” she said. “Right now, I think hope’s all we have.”

 

(Before she left, Claire dialled the only number she knew by heart. She felt her hands tremble as the phone rang, over and over just like it had a thousand times before.

She hung up just before the voicemail message.

She’d phone her mom later, she decided - she wasn’t strong enough to face the truth right now.)

 

***

 

Claire made her way to Hell’s Kitchen with the air of someone on a mission to save the world. It was yet another internal lie to push away the growing dread, which was getting harder by the second. She tried not to look at the other people on the street, occasionally breaking into a sprint until Matt’s building came into view; she took the stairs two at a time, bursting through the door before she realised what she’d feel when she crossed the threshold.

 

Foggy walked up to greet her. They pulled each other into a hug without a word - handfuls of clothing in unsteady fists, both of them holding the other upright.

 

“If it means anything… I’m- glad you’re alive.”

 

“Likewise.”

 

A few moments pass in a comforting stillness, whilst Claire decided their next move. They can’t do anything themselves, they’re not strong enough to fix this, can’t silence the screams from the street below.

 

They’re only human, she thought - so they both need someone who’s more.    

 

“We need to find Jessica Jones.”

 

* * *

**JESSICA**  

 

Abandoned on a barstool, forgotten in the wake of calamity, the phone buzzed, beeped, and fell silent - a seemingly never-ending cycle of desperation and ultimately failure on behalf of its caller. The phone’s owner had long since abandoned the establishment; why would anyone, even New York’s best PI, choose to stay in a place that had transformed from a lively bar to a graveyard in less than a minute?

 

She had run - of course she had -  at breakneck speed out of Josie’s, only to find that the maze of streets outside were just as choked with death and despair as the place she had left behind.

 

_Shit. SHIT._

 

A fresh wave of panic rose in her throat, crushing the frail resolve she had managed to piece together in the wake of the disaster. For the first time, Jessica Jones realised that this was not a problem she could solve by drinking or punching.

This was the apocalypse.

 

At least she still had Trish - she was holding her sister’s hand so tightly that Jess feared it would crumble into dust. Neither of them were planning on letting go at any point in the foreseeable future; while they were still together, as far as they were concerned, the world would keep on turning.

 

They ran together, hand in hand, navigating the labyrinth of abandoned cars and burning buildings that their city had transformed into. Neither had any idea where they were heading; instinct and raw panic were in the driving seat for their flight. Despite this, it was barely a surprise when they ended up back at Jess’ apartment building, one of the only places either of them had ever felt safe.

 

***

 

The door to Alias Investigations was thrown open so violently that its glass window was shattered for the hundredth time, and Jess and Trish entered the flat.

 

“Jess, I keep telling you to buy the crunchy one-” said Malcolm’s voice from the kitchen, and, like a six-foot beam of hope, stepped out holding a jar of peanut butter.

 

“ _Shit.”_ Without thinking, Jessica sprinted the few metres across the room, running straight into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. All she could think of whilst she hugged him tight was _thank God you’re ok._ The longer she stood there the more scared she was that he would turn to dust in her arms.

 

“Jess, what? You’re- you’re kind of hurting me-”

 

She stepped back, with her hand on the wall to stop the spinning in her head. “You’re ok,” she breathed, “You’re alive!”

 

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”

 

“You mean you don’t know? Dammit, Malcolm!”

 

Wordlessly, Trish cut between the pair and pressed her phone into Malcolm’s peanut-butter covered hand; he pulled out of Jess’ embrace and immediately collapsed back onto the couch, becoming pale with shock as he scrolled through the dozens of news alerts that he had somehow avoided.

After a few silent, tense minutes, Malcolm looked back up at the only people left in his world, and whispered, “This is... this is really bad, you guys.”

 

“Yeah Malcolm, I think we all figured that out.”, Jessica snapped back. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

 

None of them could come up with any answer that satisfied the gravity of the situation.

 

Until the office phone began to ring.

 

“ _Jessica Jones? This is Claire Temple. We need to talk…”_

 

***

 

The conversation lasts only a few minutes, but afterwards  Jessica ends up staring at the wall in silence for more than half an hour going over what she learnt from it - Matt’s gone, Luke’s not answering his phone, Jessica is quite possible the last surviving member of the Defenders.

 

_Fucking great._

 

But Claire and a man who Jessica vaguely remembers are still alive; they have no idea what happened to the planet but desperately want to find some way to stop it. Or reverse it. Or fix it in anyway possible. And they know they can’t do it alone, so want Jessica’s help - even if it means endangering the few people they have left.

 

_Even fucking better._

 

They’ve decided to rendezvous in the warehouse down by the docks as soon as possible - Jessica still hasn’t decided whether she’ll take Malcolm and Trish with her when she goes.

 

Actually, she has decided. Where she goes, they go; she’s not going to lose them.

 

Because from what she heard, she’s lucky to have anything left to lose.

 

* * *

**COLLEEN**  

 

_ Head to the warehouse. Find the others. _

_ They can help, right? They always know what to do. _

That’s what Danny would tell her.

Colleen walked, trying to disguise her panic, down Fifty-first Street. She held her Katana tight as if it would protect her from the pain of the past ten minutes, the handle slipping further out of her quivering hands with every step. She didn’t even know if she was wearing shoes. The only thought in her head was getting to the warehouse and finding the others - for what purpose, she didn’t know. Maybe she needed to speak to someone, to see a face she knew so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Maybe because she hadn’t been able to bear the sight of ash on the dojo floor any longer.

Maybe it was because inside, in the irrational part of her brain she kept trying to suppress, she hoped to walk in that door and see Danny. Alive, and smiling that bold grin that never failed to make a bad day alright.

Instead, she walked.  

Trying not to step in the swirling ashes.

Avoiding the people, screaming on the ground, trying to press dust back together in their shaking hands.

 

A car screamed around the corner towards her, its driver - from what she could see - drifting out of the half-open window. She stumbled out of the way just before it collided with the front of a clothes store with a sickening crunch, the hood crumpling amidst fresh shards of glass.

Colleen stopped for half a second to listen. Just in case. 

Whoever had been in that car was either dead or ash, she assumed - nothing she could do.

 

She kept walking.

  
  
  


She wasn’t paying attention. The adrenaline got to her more than she’d usually let it, narrowing her vision and her focus, blinding her to the man behind her shoulder - 

Because one moment she was alone, and the next, an arm wrapped itself tight across her throat, pulling up and pressing the bone into her trachea -

He’d left her arms free. Ametuer.

Colleen turned her head and stabbed at his eyes with her fingers. He gave a cry as she hit the target, loosening his grip enough for her to grasp his arm and drop downwards with all her body weight. She ducked under his arm, kept it controlled at her chest with one hand, and, with the other, sent her forearm flying down into the back of his head.

 

He fell to the ground with a cry.

“What-” she said, barely out of breath. He’s been easy. “Are you doing?”

He pushed himself up on his elbows and turned to face her. “The fu-”

“I said, what-”

“Taking your wallet, bitch,” he said as if she was the one in the wrong. “Y’ didn’t have t-” 

She sent a right hook into his jaw and he was out cold.

 

It was one of those days.

 

 

“Hey! Chick with the sword?”

 

The shout came from a figure on the street across from her. Waving, unsmiling, but miraculously and overwhelmingly _here._

 

“...Misty?”

 

They started towards each other, and Colleen could see her own relief mirrored in Misty’s eyes; Colleen sprinted the last few metres, throwing unsteady arms around her neck.

 

“Danny, he… I don’t…” she stammered.

 

Misty just wrapped her arms around her, and Colleen fell into a trembling silence. They stood in the middle of the street, ashes swirling in the wind, gripping each other tighter with every passing second of the nightmare. Colleen scrunched her eyes shut against the glare of the sun, burying her face in Misty’s shoulder.

 

The daylight felt wrong, like a laugh at a funeral; nothing could be more different from what she was feeling inside.

She felt the breeze on her shoulders, the subtle electric hum of Misty’s arm. She felt tears - whose tears they were, she wasn’t sure - as she stood and waited. Shaking.

For the ground to turn to dust.

 

* * *

  **CLAIRE**

 

They’d acquired the warehouse from a couple of careless gun dealers last summer. It had been an easy job in an afternoon, right in the middle of when this _thing_ was just starting to work. The squad. Street-level Avengers. Hell’s Kitchen’s… defenders. Whatever.  

 

It stood on the West side of the docks, overlooking a small pontoon and an enthusiastic contraband transport hub.

They usually left the properties they’d seized empty, ready for the council to take over once they found them, but this one they couldn’t let go to waste. It was a good strategy to keep the gangs away from a prime criminal activity spot; it was also strangely nostalgic after they had all spent the night there to avoid the police.

It quickly became a regular thing, meeting up to train, to plan, when they just needed an escape. And although none of them had ever said it, it was also partly because of the company. There was always someone to share their troubles with. Someone to speak to. Someone that understood the life they had chosen to lead and the sacrifices that came with it.

 

And now, it was their last sanctuary.

 

As the sun began to set, the small group assembled just outside, huddled close together but somehow far apart at the same time. Jessica, Claire, Foggy, Malcolm, Trish, Colleen, Misty - all that was left after whatever cataclysm had stripped this planet of its mightiest heroes.

 

Claire couldn’t help but realise the inevitable - no one else was coming.

 

They would have to save themselves.


	2. pick up the pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac
> 
> (Foggy and Malcolm play 'Dishonored' during this chapter!)

**JESSICA**

Jessica left the rest of the group and wandered up the wooden stairs into a small, dark room at the back of the second floor. It had no windows and no entrance other than a huge steel door in the corner, so it was by far the least appealing space in the whole building; for some reason, they’d chosen that room to sleep in.

_ For some reason.  _ Jess knew exactly why. The four of them, each with some distant paranoia-inducing trauma, all felt safe locked in there with one eye on that steel door.

 

The room had four mattresses on the floor, piled high with all the blankets they’d acquired in the past few months. Empty pizza boxes, Claire’s medical supplies, a couch with broken springs.

A few books on the shelf for long nights waiting for the sirens to pass.

Alcohol. With a sticky note reading  _ ‘Stay the fuck away if you value your limbs’ _ in Jessica’s handwriting, on her bottle of whiskey. 

(She ran her fingers over the tiny holes dotting the paper and remembered using a drawing pin to punch a simple  _ NO  _ in Braille).

 

One of Luke’s hoodies hung on a peg by the door, peppered with bullet holes.

Matt’s spare Daredevil clothes folded neatly on his mattress.

Danny’s bright yellow scarf.

 

Jessica Jones hovered in the door for a while before leaving, taking in the smell of damp floorboards and antiseptic.

For the first moment in a long, long time, she felt completely alone.

  
  


Up a flight of rusted stairs was a mismatched disaster as an attempt at something livable. Couches, a mini-fridge (for the beer, of course), multiple boxes with confiscated villain tech ranging from decent weaponry to  _ whatever the fuck those spring things were. _ __   
  


There’s also an oven. For pizza-worthy emergencies. 

 

Claire, bless her flawless soul, had started The Pizza Thing.

Jessica remembered the biting winds of that night in January, the frost on the ground, the cold that she and Matt distinctly felt after the two of them had ended up in the Hudson after a well-timed bomb detonated and flung them off the side of the jetty.

They’d had no heaters in the warehouse yet.

When somebody had called Claire to deal with the numerous cuts between them, she arrived with an armful of blankets and a pizza still hot from the shop down the road. It received the appropriate reaction; a week later, someone had managed to find and install an oven.

And so The Pizza Thing was born.

 

* * *

 

**MALCOLM**

 

Malcolm stared through the door of the oven. He stared. And kept staring. 

He watched the cheese bubble, the pastry puffs out and burn around the edges, saw the onions curl and melt in the orange haze of the grill. 

 

His eyes began to blur after a while, as if he was looking at something in between the oven and his face.

He felt strange, sort of empty; he knew that if everything had sunk in, he would be screaming. 

 

That was the problem. 

It had been hours since the world dissolved at his feet. And he was still in denial. 

 

As the final bubble of cheese browned over he stood, slowly so as not to aggravate the cramp in his legs, and found a towel on top of an old washing machine. 

 

Open the oven. 

 

Take out the pizza.

 

Turn off the oven. 

 

Set it on the table. 

 

Find a-  _ goddamn it.  _

 

His hand swung to the side and knocked Jessica’s beer off the table. It hit the wall and smashed, spraying the room in foam and chips of glass; Malcolm took a breath to calm himself before he broke something more valuable, realising it had done fuck-all to help his blind anger. 

 

Jessica was going to be pissed. 

 

And there it was again. Why should he give a shit about what she thinks when the world just ended? Again? When his parents could be dead  _ (no)  _ and he was worrying about  _ fucking pizza.  _

His sister. Jesus. _ I’m sorry.  _

 

Malcolm kicked a chunk of glass out of his way. 

 

He moved the pizza onto a tray, swatting the beginnings of angry tears from his eyes. You can’t cry in front of superheroes, he told himself - and swore no matter how much he felt like his world was crumbling, no matter how scared, he couldn’t be the first to break.  _ Be strong,  _ he thought. For his sister.

 

He carried the tray across to the table on unsteady legs. 

 

Jessica left with a single slice, ignoring Trish who called after the retreating leather jacket. Colleen and Misty sat in silence, their shoulders pressed together, despite how inconvenient that made eating the pizza. Malcolm somewhat envied their quiet and unwavering solidarity. Claire appeared briefly, taking half a pizza, and then giving him a shaky smile as she disappeared to the far side of the room. Malcolm returned the smile as best he could, knowing it was more for Claire’s sake than his. Each and every one of them wanted to feel like they were coping. 

 

Malcolm sat beside Foggy, who didn’t touch the pizza. He stared at it with a raw sadness, unconcealed behind tearful eyes. 

He’d met this man once before - at the precinct, where they shared a few words and where Malcolm put two-and-two together about Matt Murdock. 

(It had taken him a while if he was honest with himself. Wasn’t as simple and two-and-two; it was more blind-and-ninja, wait, blind-and- _ ninja _ ?)

 

They’d got to know each other a little via their mutual superhero squad. Sometimes, they’d organise a takeout party when the powered people had gone - the Sidekick Meetups, they called them. Founded for the purposes of having something to do while they waited for the inevitable call for help.

(The Four didn’t know about these - they didn’t know how Trish and Malcolm took it in turns to stay awake when Jessica was out. Ready to carry her home, drunk and disoriented, trying to drink away the memories of another life lost.

They didn’t know how Colleen would pace the Dojo until she fell asleep on the padded floor, Claire’s number on speed dial.

They had no idea about Misty in the precinct at the early hours, deleting CCTV, slipping through legal loopholes, always there to cover their vigilante tracks. 

Nobody knew about Foggy and Karen using their spare keys to Matt’s flat in the dead of night. They restocked the first aid kit, leaving a glass of water and a flask of soup. Foggy would stay with him, sometimes - everyone knew he was the only reason Matt coped.

They didn’t know how Claire kept her phone on, her medical bag in the car, drinking coffee until she knew they’d all survived the night.)

 

The Sidekick Meetups gave them all a place where they’d never have to worry alone. 

 

Foggy Nelson seemed passive in everything he did, apart from being nice, which he did aggressively. It was rare to find someone so unbreakably  _ kind  _ in the face of adversity and sky-high stakes, but there he was, making everybody coffee and encouraging conversation whilst they waited for news from Midland Circle.

 

Now, though, Malcolm thought, he’d finally broken.

 

“Hi,” Foggy said as Malcolm joined him, looking up and plastering his face with the ghost of a smile he’d had before.

 

“Hey,” he replied; neither one of them had the energy for anything more creative. 

 

They sat together in silence for a while, enjoying the comforting proximity of friends. Someone had turned on the news earlier only to find a blank screen, humming slightly as it displayed only black. Nobody had the heart to turn it off. They all waited for a miracle. Part of Malcolm wanted to say something, wanted to share their worries - it might help to break through the shock, he thought. 

 

Foggy beat him to it. With an unexpected burst of energy, he snapped himself out of that sorrowful glaze and turned to Malcolm.

 

“Should we talk about it, or be distracted from it?” He asked.

 

“Distracted, definitely,” Malcolm replied, silently cursing himself for sounding too joyful.  

 

“How about this?” 

 

The unbearable silence returned for a few more moments, as Foggy leant forwards to flick a few switches on a small console under the TV screen - it suddenly burst into colour, the contrast between the former and new levels of brightness as stark as the difference between night and day. The new bright light only served to highlight the dark shadows under the eyes of both of the men, but it was somehow comforting - it offered a potential reprieve from the boredom and the stress, a sanctuary from their own thoughts.

 

Malcolm recognised the logo that flashed up - he wasn’t surprised to learn that Foggy was a gamer, considering all that he knew about the guy. He just wasn’t sure what kind of taste Foggy had in games; horror or action seemed inappropriate considering the situation they were in.

 

 Even the idea of having to kill a digital avatar came close to turning his stomach after everything he had seen that day.

 

But, perhaps sensing his mood, Foggy selected a game from the menu in which murder was optional - Malcolm had never heard of it before, but was pleasantly surprised to find himself becoming engaged with the Lion King-esque plot in a dystopian-yet-Victorian setting. He was even more pleasantly surprised to find that Foggy wouldn’t be embarrassed by his lack of skill at gaming, as Foggy died more times than he would have thought possible before handing over the controller.

 

Malcolm decided, whilst watching Foggy demolish a dozen evil guardsmen, to save his panic for later. Put armageddon on the back-burner for a while. 

 

For now, he thought, he’d focus on this next level - let his mind be absorbed by a fictional fantasy as he often did when the world got too much. He had friends, had somewhere safe. 

 

Maybe the end of the world wasn’t so bad.

 

* * *

 

**JESSICA**

 

Jessica Jones was a fan of high places.

 

She loved the feeling of being beyond everyone else, towering away from society. Floating above what people expected of her; above the noise, the fear, the responsibilities. Nothing but the wind and an endless sky.

 

The warehouse, coincidentally, had an adequately high-up roof. She jumped up there in the first week of her less-than-legal ownership - there was no staircase or ladder, which, to her immense gratitude, meant nobody else would get up there in the near future. Luke probably could, but he was far too reasonable a person to be sitting on a goddamn roof. Matt just… couldn’t. Danny might be able to- actually, who knows? In the short time Jess had known him, she’d discovered so many new uses for a glowing fist.

 

Anyway.

 

The first night she had sat up there, it was to escape the testosterone-fest downstairs. 

(The Avengers seem functional, right? How the hell did they manage that?) 

They’d tried to formulate a plan of attack as a small army would. To make them more effective, use each other’s skills to their advantage; alternatively, not trip over each other’s feet in the middle of a fight. 

This was stressful to begin with, as Jessica’s tried-and-tested foolproof method was Absolute Chaos. If you don’t know what you’re about to do, then the enemy can’t predict it - theoretically. 

Luke suggested they start off simple and draft a formation in which the strongest goes through the hypothetical door first.

That turned out fucking brilliantly.

 

_ “We can all agree that Matt’s the weakest.” _

 

_ “Hey, no… that’s not…” _

 

_ “You are, dude.” _

 

_ “Once the Fist of Death is used up Danny’s pretty much useless.” _

 

_ “Fifteen years in K’un-Lun is not  _ useless- _ ” _

 

_ “Yeah, but I can do martial arts too-” _

 

_ “You paused in the middle to get a goddamn  _ law degree… _ ” _

 

_ “W… which is useful, thank you, I can… do legal stuff…” _

 

_ “‘Did your legal stuff save you from a building?” _

 

_ “No, but-” _

 

_ “Well then.” _

 

_ “Vigilantism is morally grey and legally very dark, so-” _ __   
  


_ “Illegal.” _

 

_ “.. right, so I’m useful.” _

_   
_ _ “How the f-” _

 

_ “Luke’s the strongest.” _

 

_ “Jesus Christ.” _

 

Jessica pushed the memories from her mind. She couldn’t bear to think about that now; and besides, repressed emotions had always been her forte.

 

She held a slice of pizza in her hand that was stone cold by now. Some of the cheese had fallen off the half-eaten end onto the roof beneath her, but she didn’t even notice - she hadn’t been hungry and didn’t think she’d ever feel hungry again. 

 

(She thought of ashes on the road and just felt sick.)

 

The view from where she sat was what a photographer would kill for - too many buildings to count, too shiny and too bright. They were flooded with coloured lights that reflected onto the Hudson, separating her from the luminous travel magazine. The colours swept across the water towards her in huge tendrils of red and orange and blue; on another day, they’d ripple as a boat disrupts the surface. 

 

Not today.

 

There were no boats today.

 

Today, the Hudson was still.  

 

(She knew the water beneath was anything but - you’d hear horror stories about the people sucked under, the lives lost to raging currents that you didn’t feel until it was too late.) 

 

The sky beyond her was a fuzzy purple. A hint of orange fades upwards, bleeding from the skyline like a crappy photo filter. Satellites and the occasional plane made their way through the haze, the ones Vido mistakes for constellations - he’s too young to hear about the horrors of light pollution, according to Oscar, who’d lie and tell him that New York still has stars. He once said-

 

Oh, shit. 

 

Vido?

 

* * *

 

**CLAIRE**

 

The warehouse, as battered and damaged as it was, felt weirdly homely to Claire - she couldn’t deny that, even after everything that had happened.

But still, she couldn’t relax - every so often, something would catch her eye that felt like a sucker punch in the chest after The Incident. A glance at a hoodie that Luke had worn tirelessly until it had been little more than a bundle of rags brought a fresh wave of nausea and sadness; she found herself staring, blinking tears away, at a pair of gloves that she had given Matt during their group Secret Santa exchange the previous year. 

She felt hollow, emptied out by grief for her friends and her patients - the pizza she was steadily eating became saltier as she was unable to stop the tears from escaping. 

It was still good pizza - Malcolm had done an excellent job recreating The Pizza Thing despite the larger-than-usual amount of stress they were under. Now that the cooking was done, he was off with Foggy - Claire could hear both of their voices from her cramped hideaway, along with the sounds of some assassin-and-whale-related video game that Foggy was presumably introducing him to, the one that he had been attempting to persuade her to play for months.

She wasn’t sure where Colleen and Misty had disappeared to; Jess had also vanished to God knows where probably attempting to drown her sorrows.

So Claire was alone, curled up in a shadowy corner on a mattress that had definitely seen better days.

 

And it dawned on her, whilst she started at the cold and solidified cheese, that she had no idea where to go from here.

* * *

 

**JESSICA**

 

She assumed.  _ Assumed  _ that Vido would be alright - if he was gone, nothing she could do, and if he was okay then Oscar must be too, right?

 

It was like hearing about cancer. People got it, people died, but never  _ you.  _ Not if you’ve been lucky so far. And Jessica had been exceptionally lucky - she had Trish, had Malcolm. She thought of the distant faces of Foggy and Claire, of Colleen’s stunned silence. Jessica loved those who were gone - not that she’d ever tell them that - but so far, her luck was such that the consequences hadn’t sunk in. 

 

She hadn’t even considered Vido could be alone in his flat, his tiny hands plastered with what used to be his father, as ashes coat the wet paint on the walls.

 

Not two minutes later and Jessica held a payphone in her trembling hands. She dialled a number she was embarrassed to have memorised, hands slipping on the keypad. The phone started to ring and she steadied herself on the wall - she could hardly draw breath, couldn’t think of anything other than what she could hear at the end of the phone. It scared her, how quickly her panic mounted; five minutes ago she’d been calm enough, her brain focused on Trish alone. Hadn’t even considered an eight-year-old kid alone in the apocalypse. 

 

Now, though, her brain was replaying what she didn’t want to hear.    
_ This is Oscar Arocho, please leave a message. _

Because that would mean she’d lost someone else. 

 

It was five minutes at most, but felt like an eternity.

 

_ “... Hello?” _

 

For a second she couldn’t speak. Relief flooded her chest, but mixed with the panic she felt from the tone of Oscar’s voice, leaving a lump in her throat. “Oscar?”

 

_ “Jessica? Are you… alright?” _

 

“Uh- yeah. Vido?”

 

_ “He’s here. All good. Sort of.” _

 

Jessica could feel her heart racing in her chest and grinned despite herself. 

 

_ “Hey, is this anything to do with… your lot?”  _ Oscar asked from down the phone. 

 

“No. I’ve no goddamn clue. Are you safe?”

 

_ “Ish. We’re with Mrs  Ripley right now - Vido was home alone and someone broke in. Stole everything.” _

 

“Shit.”

 

_ “Yeah. I don’t… I don’t know what to do, Jess, I- Sonia’s not answering her phone and Vido won’t stop asking about her, I’m… scared.”  _ His voice trembled a little, and she felt her own emotions mirror him as the situation started sinking in. 

 

“Tell Mrs Ripley to lock her doors. And windows. Stay inside, stay safe - it’ll be okay,” she lied.

 

She lied.

 

And now, she was on the move- she couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stand by any longer while they  were in danger.

 

Jessica Jones left the warehouse and ventured back into the unknown. 


End file.
